MISSING LINKS

HOW seemingly unrelated figures in the news just might be connected to each other after all…

JAY BLADES

… welcomed King Charles to BBC1’s Repair Shop last week, helping fix a Royal clock and urn. From a South London estate – and with a dad who fathered 25 other children – Blades worked in factories before turning his life around with a degree in criminology, a subject also studied by…

DWAYNE ‘THE ROCK’ JOHNSON

… who wanted to work for the CIA but never got the grades, so had to make do with becoming a £20milliona-movie Hollywood superstar. His business spin-offs include a deal with a sportswear company, which means you can get a ‘Product Rock’-branded sports bra. Other celebs to have launched their own bras include Rihanna, Nancy Dell’Olio, Oti Mabuse and…

DAVINA McCALL

Now practically national treasure-status, the Masked Singer panellist once worked as a waitress at the Moulin Rouge in Paris and was a teenage heroin addict. She credits her boyfriend of the time, Eric Clapton (he was 40, she 19), for cleaning up her life. The legendary guitarist played on a demo disc McCall made to try to break into the record industry – but even his talents weren’t enough to get her signed. Also among Clapton’s exes is…

CARLA BRUNI

They dated for about a year in the 1990s, when she was a model – long before she met and married now former French President Nicolas Sarkozy. Her other beaus include Mick Jagger and Donald Trump. Carla sang at Nelson Mandela’s 91st birthday party in New York, as did…

ARETHA FRANKLIN

… who had a reputation for peculiar demands, insisting that venues turn off the airconditioning and promoters pay her $25,000 of her fee in cash after each gig. She’d never let her Chanel purse out of her sight, even taking it on stage, would never stay above the fifth floor in a hotel, nor go anywhere by plane, having a morbid fear of flying. It’s a phobia shared by…

QUEEN CONSORT

… but Camilla ‘has to embrace that fear’, the Palace has said. Yesterday, it was revealed a BA plane she was travelling on from India was hit by a bird, which would have done nothing to assuage her phobia.